Texas staying in Big 12, leaving Pac-10 with … what?

So much for the much-ballyhooed talk of the Pac-10 turning into a Pac-16 super conference.

The University of Texas announced Monday that it’ll stay put in the Big 12, effectively shuttering the Pac-10’s hopes of raiding the Big 12 since Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech now surely will follow the Longhorns’ lead.

“We are excited about the future of the Pac-10 Conference and we will continue to evaluate future expansion opportunities under the guidelines previously set forth by our Presidents and Chancellors,” Scott said.

The Pac-10’s fallback — having already added Colorado — will likely be to bring on Utah and become a 12-team conference.

But is that really an improvement?

I’d been reluctant to abandon the tradition and tidy round-robin scheduling advantages of the Pac-10, but eventually came to the conclusion that a Pac-16 indeed had merit, not to mention mega-money possibilities.

But breaking up the tradition and scheduling just to add Colorado and Utah seems like a bad trade. It’s one thing to play Colorado and Utah in nonconference games now and then, but to schedule them regularly — at the expense of playing two traditional Pac-10 rivals — seems silly.

Are Husky fans going to be happy to play Utah in football instead of USC or Oregon on some years? I don’t think so.

Is the question and controversy over some team winning the Pac-12 football title on a year it doesn’t have to play two of the top teams in the league worth the increase in TV market size from Colorado and Utah?

And what happens in basketball, where each team was able to play a home-and-home series against the other nine foes? Does the Pac-12 go to divisions now? If so, does that mean not seeing UCLA playing at Hec Ed some seasons?

We’ll have to see how everything shakes out, but my initial feeling is that if bringing Texas and Oklahoma and the rest of the big additions into a Pac-16 wasn’t going to happen, the status quo would have been preferable.